Hello all! I’ve been extensively testing and trying out the farming system, and it looks like the last patch did indeed fix most of the farming system. There still are a few bugs however. I thought I’d put together a guide on farming of what I know. Please feel free to share your knowledge too, so we can make farming a great part of H1FARM1.

To The Devs – THANK YOU for the farming system. Please please please add and expand upon this. It’s one of my favorite things in game.

BEFORE THE MARCH 19 PATCH

– All seeds before the patch were turned into Dried seeds. I think this served as a reset without wiping. Dried seeds can’t be planted and only eaten as food.
– Any crops planted BEFORE this patch will not yield seeds, but will yield crop.
– Wheat planted BEFORE this patch will appear as corn stalks.
– The previous method of “drying out” the corn has been removed. If you only have corn you cannot make seeds. You’ll need freshly looted seed to make more seeds.

SEEDS

Yes, seeds do drop/spawn. But there is/are bug(s).
– [BUG] Ground/Table spawned corn seeds are not lootable. Ground/Table spawned wheat seeds are lootable.
– Container-found seeds (both corn and wheat) are spawning and lootable – Seeds are mostly found in houses. Kitchen cabinets to be more specific. I’ve found them in Pleasant Valley, off G Street on the outskirts of Cranberry, and in Ranchito Taquito. My guess is they are able to drop in all housing kitchen cabinets. Just uncommon to rare.

There are also ground spawns in some sheds. However, once corn seeds spawn, as of the 3/19 patch it bottlenecks the spawns since corn seeds can’t be looted.

I also think we’ll see more spawn in Bumjick Farms. But as many of you know, it is a dead zone for spawns (bug?) and nothing spawns there on the ground or in any containers/vehicles.

[NOTE] I’ve also personally found seeds inside a truck near one of the sheds that spawn seeds. However, it is the only case I have ever seen in 300 hours of gameplay.

Currently you can “dig” on your deck foundation or inside shelters. But placement depends on the underlying geometry.

[BUG] A seed holder placed on a structure currently has one seed socket rendered unuseable. I suppose this will likely be changed in the future so you can’t “dig” on structures. When I tested this on a ground-placed “dig” all 4 sockets accepted seed packets.

Once you have seed packets you can right-click and place them into one of the accepting sockets.

GROWING

According to the latest patch notes :

They will grow more in the day than in the night. Using fertilizer on them will make them grow much faster for 8 hours. It will take about 2 days to grow corn, but if fertilizer is used it will take about 10 hours. Harvesting them is now more reliable and obvious because the interaction highlighting will only appear when ready.

In my testing of this it is working as intented. With fertilizing it took a full day or so from planting to harvest. They also do only grow during the in-game day.

[NOTE] When the notes say “2 days” here that mean 48 real-world hours, not 2 in-game days. When the notes say “grow more in the day” they mean the in-game day-night cycle. It was a bit ambiguous in the patch notes.

FERTILIZE

Fertilizing is OPTIONAL but speeds up the growing process.

When you fertilize you right-click the fertilizer from your inventory and USE. This will fertilize an area (all 4 seed sockets will get fertilized if you stand near the “dig.”
Each seed socket that has a seed will show a little mound of fertilizer as a visual cue that it received the fertilizer.

[NOTE] I’m not sure how large the area of fertilizer is (if it will fertilize multiple “digs” with a single bag. Also, it’s unclear if seeds planted after a socket has been fertilized remain fertilized or if is required to fertilize AFTER the planting. If anyone can help with this, please comment below.

HARVEST

Once you get the [E] Harvest Corn or Wheat highlight, you can get your crop!
YAY!
I’ve confirmed that harvesting yields (at least) 1 corn/wheat and 2 seeds. Only harvesting crops planted AFTER the patch will yield seeds.

So 1 planted seed + fertilizer + time (10-48hr?) = 1 crop + 2 seeds

[NOTE] What I HAVEN’T tested is the ability to double or triple your yield as before the patch. If you leave the crop unharvested you previously got 2X or 3X corn. This did not work for Wheat before the patch though. I’ll update if someone can confirm. There is some speculation that this additional yield was due to a server reset, which is plausible.

Go forth and farm, ye hard working survivors!

Hope you guys enjoyed, and please leave any updates or comments to append to this guide!